3 Tech Specialties with Rising Salaries – IT Salary Survey 2016

April 1, 2016

The financial news has been good for IT professionals. According to the data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, IT employment grew 3.1% in 2015, and 44% of IT managers who participated in Computerworld’s 2016 IT Salary Survey said they expect to expand their IT staffs this year.

Salaries are also increasing. But pay raises are higher in some IT disciplines than they are in others. “The competition for some niche skills is driving up salaries for those positions. In some areas for some skills there are rapid gains; in other areas the gains are more modest or flat,” says Time Herbert, senior vice president of research and market intelligence at the nonprofit trade organization CompTIA.

Now let’s check the 10 IT specialties sing the biggest salary growths.

1. Cloud computing

Moving enterprise systems and applications to the cloud has become a top priority for U.S. businesses. As more organizations do more in the cloud, competition for people with cloud experience heats up, and that has driven up salaries in turn, says Herbert.

2. Security

No surprise here: One of the most in-demand specialties today is information security expertise. Our survey shows an average pay gain of 4.6% over 2015 for those who work in security, and more than a quarter of IT managers who plan to expand their staffs this year cited security as an area in which they will be adding personnel.

Bob Riley says that in his more than 20 years in IT, he has seen security move from a side role in everyone’s job to a front-and-center function that’s in demand. Riley is a mobile security architect at Duluth, Ga. And he syas his employer’s security team has grown from three people three years ago to 26 today.

3. Networking

According to data, pay in this industry has grown 4.2% with average compensation ranging from $62,000 for network administrators to $112,000 for network architects. CompTIA’s Herbert notes that the number of job posting for network and computer systems operators increased 37% from 2014 to 2015, and postings for computer network architechts jumped 44%.